{"id":61,"date":"2014-10-16T22:01:54","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T22:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/?p=61"},"modified":"2014-10-16T22:01:54","modified_gmt":"2014-10-16T22:01:54","slug":"connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/2014\/10\/16\/connections\/","title":{"rendered":"Connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is connected educator month so I’m going to share my story of how I connected with an educator online and used his ideas in my classroom. Get this: that teacher works in THE SAME BUILDING as I do, but I had no idea what he was up to in English class, or how it could translate to Mathematics. I took my ideas from his website, and then had my own personal in-house professional development workshop, where he spent 15 minutes talking me through the concept so I could put it into action.<\/p>\n

What was the concept? Visible Thinking. You can look at amazing examples of student work creating visual maps in English literature at his website, comicsineducation.com<\/a>. I was fascinated with the student work on his site, so I asked if we could find a way to apply that to math… specifically, to Calculus.<\/p>\n

Stop laughing! Look at this:<\/p>\n

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by H.B, grade 12 student, The York School<\/p><\/div>\n

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Calculus is many things:\u00a0for some of you, it is the beginning of all great knowledge in the Scientific tradition; for others, it was the course that sent them on a track into other (non-math) fields; and for others, it was a necessary hurdle in pursuing other goals. It is also highly visual, conceptual, and connected<\/strong><\/span><\/em>. Calculus is the course where students begin to see all their other math knowledge and skills converge, where they must finally draw upon concepts they learned years before (fractions! exponents! trigonometry! algebra!), and bring them together in solving new problems. There are many stories within Calculus, but none as interesting to me as the stories going on inside my students’ minds as they learn.<\/p>\n

\"by<\/a>

by T.L., grade 12 student, The York School<\/p><\/div>\n

And so, at the end of the first unit on derivatives, when my students had dutifully learned all the rules and (hopefully) internalized the big concepts, I had them create a visual narrative of their problem-solving process. In order to get them started, I showed them examples – I created one myself and had Dr. D. of Comics in Education create one as well (because aren’t all English teachers also Math nerds? This one is… follow him on twitter at @GlenDowney)<\/p>\n

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\"by<\/a>

by K.K, grade 12 student, The York School<\/p><\/div>\n

The results surprised me. In fact, I enjoyed creating my own example so much that I didn’t want to stop! My students were given 40 minutes to work on theirs, and begged to use the entire 80 minute period. They spent those 80 minutes engaged in mapping a solution to ONE single math problem! In tech circles this exercise could be called a “brain dump”, as I asked for them to show me their inner monologue as they solved the problem. What thoughts went through their minds? What connections were they making? Is there humor in that thought process? Confusion? Does it get resolved? The answers are evident in their work, and I am thrilled with the results.<\/p>\n

\"by<\/a>

by Z.A. and J.L, grade 12 students, The York School<\/p><\/div>\n

In terms of logistics, I started by showing the classic animated TED talk that RSAnimate did with Sir Ken Robinson’s speech on Changing Paradigms in Education<\/a>. We talked about the power of the visual component, then I gave them a choice of 3 problems. Each student chose one, and created\u00a0a visual map of their solution path. We listened to good music, we talked about mathematics, they collaborated a bit and helped each other where necessary. It was\u00a0one of my favorite lessons of the year, and I hope to find more meaningful chances to repeat the activity.<\/p>\n

\"by<\/a>

by S.F., grade 12 student, The York School<\/p><\/div>\n

Many thanks to Dr. Downey for the ideas and the inspiration, and to my students who have agreed to display their work in this post!<\/p>\n


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This is connected educator month so I’m going to share my story of how I connected with an educator online and used his ideas in my classroom. Get this: that Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7],"tags":[22,23,17,24],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lesson-ideas","category-math","tag-calculus","tag-lesson-ideas-2","tag-reflection","tag-student-centered-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}